The Shift Protocol, which systematically reduces and/or eliminates Limiting Beliefs using Reconditioning via Exposure & Integration (REI) (more commonly referred to as Reprocessing)

It helps to take the memory that is associated with Limiting Belief and stored it in the wrong part of your brain. It’s stored in the emotionally active, fight-or-flight, amygdala part of your brain. Bilateral stimulation helps create new neural networks so that the memory can be moved to declarative memory (where it is supposed to be) where there is no longer any emotion attached to it. When you take away that emotion, the Limiting Belief loses its power and you no longer have to feel like you are not good enough.

Reprocessing is a type of exposure therapy. There are a couple of schools of thought about how bilateral stimulation is actually working. Often we’ll explain both to our clients. One way it works is just like any other exposure therapy, which we have been doing for years and years as Psychologists. The basic principle is, as opposed to being an ostrich, driving your head into the ground when something bad happens. Instead, we want to sit with that which gives us an opportunity to build up general distress tolerance skills. It also gives us the opportunity to see the reality of an unpleasant event or truth that we need to come to terms with. The other piece is what it’s actually doing in our brains. There is this theoretical view that it’s helping different parts of our brains to communicate more efficiently with each other. Regardless of which theory we subscribe to or if we are into both of them, the results are always the same. It shows good or better efficacy than just exposure therapy alone.